Peripheral Immunity, Microbial Communities, and the Power of Single-Cell Resolution
April 16, 2026 @ 15:00 – 16:30 CEST
Dr. Vanessa Dumeaux
Departments of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Oncology, Western University, London, Canada
Short biography
Vanessa Dumeaux is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Oncology at Western University (London, Canada). She holds a Doctorate in Pharmacy and a PhD in molecular epidemiology from the University of Tromsø and the University of Paris-South XI, and completed postdoctoral training at the Norwegian Radium Hospital, Princeton University, and the University of Paris Descartes. Her lab develops computational and genomic methods to identify tumoral, systemic, and microbial markers that predict cancer therapy outcomes, and to characterize microbial communities at single-cell resolution.
Title of the talk: Peripheral Immunity, Microbial Communities, and the Power of Single-Cell Resolution
Abstract
Single-cell and computational genomics are transforming our ability to dissect cell-level heterogeneity in complex biological systems, from human immune responses to microbial communities. In this talk, I will present our work applying these approaches to two areas of active research in my lab.
The first part focuses on the crosstalk between peripheral immunity and the tumor microenvironment in breast cancer. I will describe how we use single-cell profiling of blood and tumor to identify molecular interactions between a patient’s immune system and their disease, and how these interactions could inform clinical management of HER2-positive and triple-negative breast cancer.
I will close with a brief overview of how we extend similar computational and single-cell strategies to study microbial communities, from characterizing functional variation in the human gut microbiome to profiling heterogeneous drug responses in fungal pathogens.
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